Richmond the
objective point, Lee lost no time in concentrating his army north of
the Rappahannock. About the middle of August McLaws, with Kershaw's,
Semmes's, Cobb's, and Barksdale's Brigades, with two brigades
under Walker and the Hampton Legion Cavalry, turned their footsteps
Northward, and bent all their energies to reach the scene of action
before the culminating events above mentioned.

At Orange C.H., on the 26th, we hastened our march, as news began to
reach us of Jackson's extraordinary movements and the excitement in
the Federal Army, occasioned by their ludicrous hunt for the "lost
Confederate." Jackson's name had reached its meridian in the minds
of the troops, and they were ever expecting to hear of some new
achievement or brilliant victory by this strange, silent, and
mysterious man. The very mystery of his movements, his unexplainable
absence and sudden reappearance at unexpected points, his audacity
in the face of the enemy, his seeming recklessness, gave unbounded
confidence to the army. The men began to feel safe at the very idea of
his disappearance and absence. While the thunder of his guns and
those of Longstreet's were sounding along the valleys of Bull Run, and
reverberating down to the Potomac or up to Washington, McLaws with his
South Carolinians, Georgians, and Mississippians was swinging along
with an elastic step between Orange C.H. and Manassas.

McClellan himself had already reached Alexandria with the last of
his troops, but by the acts of the ubiquitous Jackson his lines of
communication were cut and the Federal commander had to grope his way
in the dark for fear of running foul of his erratic enemy.

When we began nearing Manassas, we learned of the awful effect of the
two preceding days' battle by meeting the wounded. They came singly
and in groups, men marching with arms in slings, heads bandaged, or
hopping along on improvised crutches, while the wagons and ambulances
were laden with the severely wounded. In that barren country no
hospital could be established, for it was as destitute of sustenance
as the arid plains of the Arabian Desert when the great Napoleon
undertook to cross it with his beaten army. All, with the exception of
water; we had plenty of that. Passing over a part of the battlefield
about the 5th of September, the harrowing sights that were met with
were in places too sickening to admit of description. The enemy's
dead, in many places, had been left unburied, it b